Empowering young people in advocacy for transformation: A photovoice exploration of safe and unsafe spaces on a university campus

Abstract

Globally and locally, research conducted with young people about safety on university campuses
focuses primarily on risk and danger, particularly sexual danger. In this body of scholarship, the
voices of young people are often elided. Our study intends to address both of these concerns, firstly
by foregrounding the voices of students themselves through a photovoice method, and secondly by
emphasising the ways in which safe and unsafe spaces are mediated by group and social identities.
The aim of the study was to explore how students’ perceptions of safe and unsafe places are mediated
by group and social identities. A group of third-year students at an urban South African university
used photovoice, a methodology that encourages participation and empowerment of young people
in transforming their communities, to conduct a study identifying and photographing spaces they
perceived safe and unsafe in and around campus. Narratives explained these photographs. The
paper draws from this project, whose findings show that the construction of safety on campus is
mediated by different factors of marginality within the student body including gender, class, citizenship
and race among others. These findings are not only significant in raising concern about issues of
safety on campus, but they also draw the attention of university stakeholders to these concerns,
giving students a voice to be agents of transformation.